Middle-aged people are addicted to sleeping pills and tranquilizers because
doctors have been over-prescribing them, a health minister has suggested.

Anna Soubry, a health minister, said GPs’ willingness to over-prescribe some drugs had created an “addiction” to them which had to be dealt with.

Her department later said that she was referring to tranquilizers, sleeping pills and types of cough and cold medication, and depressants like benzodiazepines.

As many as 1.5million people could be reliant - and therefore in some way addicted - to benzodiazepines although there are no official figures.

Figures show that of the 197,000 people in drug treatment services last year, 32,666 were treated for prescription-only medicines or over-the-counter medicines.

Miss Soubry told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: “It’s an addiction [to prescription drugs], it’s not been particularly at the forefront of people’s mind, it’s not been sexy if you like.

“I think the time has now come for us to put it up the agenda and I’m more than happy to do that.”

She said people had to be “honest” about a problem that was caused by GPs ignoring advice from their professional bodies about safe proscription levels.

She said: “I think there have been some GPs, who’ve simply not been following the guidelines from their own professional bodies. They have been overly-prescribing these drugs for year after year when they clearly should not be doing that.

“We can now see with the devolving of power down to local authorities to provide good drug treatment facilities to their communities, hopefully we can redress a great injustice that’s been done over many years.”

Earlier this year, the Royal College of GPs issued a “consensus statement” on helping reduce addiction to prescription medicines.

It said: “Dependence on prescribed and over-the-counter medicines can occur and can be devastating to those affected and their families.

“Care is needed in the initiation of any drugs that can lead to dependence and in managing the risk and development of withdrawal symptoms.”

Public Health England, which started work this week, is currently preparing new guidance on how to tackle addition to prescription drugs. Doctors say that most of the people they see about benzodiazepine addiction are middle-aged and older in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

People who are dependent on benzodiazepines can trace back their addictions to a pattern of over-prescribing in the 1960s and 1980s.